DRINKING-CUPS. before; but Hedylus, in his Epigrams, mentioning the rhytum made by Ctesibius the engineer or machinist, speaks thus—
Come hither, all ye drinkers of sheer wine,—
Come, and within this shrine behold this rhytus,
The cup of fair Arsinoe Zephyritis,
The true Egyptian Besa, which pours forth
Shrill sounds, what time its stream is open'd wide,—
No sound of war; but from its golden mouth
It gives a signal for delight and feasting,
Such as the Nile, the king of flowing rivers,
Pours as its melody from its holy shrines,
Dear to the priests of sacred mysteries.
But honour this invention of Ctesibius,
And come, O youths, to fair Arsinoe's temple.
But Theophrastus, in his treatise on Drunkenness, says that the cup called the rhytum is given to heroes alone. Dorotheus the Sidonian, says that the rhyta resemble horns, but are perforated at both ends, and men drink of them at the bottom as they send forth a gentle stream; and that it derives its name from the liquor flowing from them ([Greek: apo tês rhyseôs]).
98. There is the sannacra too. Crates, in the fifth book of his treatise on the Attic Dialect, says that it is a drinking-cup which bears this name, but it is a Persian cup. But Philemon, in his Widow, mentioning the batiacia, and jesting on the ridiculousness of the name, says—
The sannacra, and hippotragelaphi,
And batiacia, and sannacia.
There is also the Seleuci; and we have already stated that this cup derives its name from king Seleucus; Apollodorus the Athenian having made the same statement. But Polemo, in the first chapter of his treatise addressed to Adæus, says these goblets are very like one another, the Seleucis, the Rhodias, and the Antigonis.
Then, there is the scallium. This is a small cup ([Greek: kylikion]), with which the Æolians pour libations, as Philetas tells us, in his Miscellanies.
99. There is also the scyphus. Now some people form the genitive of this word [Greek: skyphos] with a [Greek: s] invariably; but they are mistaken: for sometimes [Greek: skyphos] is masculine, like [Greek: lychnos], and then we form its genitive case without [Greek: s]; but when [Greek: skyphos] is neuter, then we must decline with the [Greek: s], [Greek: skyphos skyphous], like [Greek: teichos teichous]. But the Attic writers use the
